LAND OF HIDDEN MEN, The (Pellucidar Series)

Serve yourself, your children with the tools that seed intuitive thinking skills, books that challenge and enrich the imagination. Take them back to the time before the mind-controlling television and electronic games to the origins of the ideas that gave birth to these electronic miracles. - BOOKS that fuel the creative processes of the human imagination. Edgar Rice Burroughs was one such man and author that enriched the minds of many a person.

About the Author

Edgar Rice Burroughs is one of the world's most popular authors. With no previous experience as an author, he wrote and sold his first novel--'A Princess of Mars' in 1912. In the ensuing thirty-eight years until his death in 1950, Burroughs wrote ninety-one books and a host of short stories and articles. Although best known as the creator of the classic Tarzan of the Apes and John Carter of Mars, his restless imagination knew few bounds. Burroughs's prolific pen ranged from the American West to primitive Africa and on to romantic adventure on the moon, the planets, and even beyond the farthest star.

No one knows how many copies of ERB books have been published throughout the world. It is conservative to say, however, that with the translations into thirty-two known languages, including Braille, the number must ran into the hundreds of millions. When one considers the additional worldwide following of the Tarzan newspaper feature, radio programs, comic magazines, motion pictures, and television, Burroughs must have been known and loved by literally a thousand million or more.

Excerpt:

The Jungle

"My Lord, I may go no farther," said the Cambodian. The young white man turned in astonishment upon his native guide. Behind them lay the partially cleared trail along which they had come. It was overgrown with tall grass that concealed the tree-stumps that had been left behind the axes of the road-builders. Before them lay a ravine, at the near edge of which the trail ended. Beyond the ravine was the primitive jungle untouched by man.

"Why, we haven't even started yet!" exclaimed the white man. "You cannot turn back now. What do you suppose I hired you for?"

"I promised to take my lord to the jungle," replied the Cambodian. "There it is. I did not promise to enter it."

Gordon King lighted a cigarette. "Let's talk this thing over, my friend," he said. "It is yet early morning. We can get into the jungle as far as I care to go and out again before sundown."

The Cambodian shook his head. "I will wait for you here, my lord," he said; "but I may not enter the jungle, and if you are wise you will not."

"Why?" demanded King.

"There are wild elephants, my lord, and tigers," replied the Cambodian, "and panthers which hunt by day as well as by night."

"Why do you suppose we brought two rifles?" demanded the white. "At Kompong-Thom they told me you were a good shot and a brave man. You knew that we should have no need for rifles up to this point. No, sir, you have lost your nerve at the last minute, and I do not believe that it is because of tigers or wild elephants."

"There are other things deep in the jungle, my lord, that no man may look upon and live." "What, for example?" demanded King.

"The ghosts of my ancestors," answered the Cambodian, "the Khmers who dwelt here in great cities ages ago. Within the dark shadows of the jungle the ruins of their cities still stand, and down the dark aisles of the forest pass the ancient kings and warriors and little sad-faced queens on ghostly elephants. Fleeing always from the horrible fate that overtook them in life, they pass for ever down the corridors of the jungle, and with them are the millions of the ghostly dead that once were their subjects. We might escape My Lord the Tiger and the wild elephants, but no man may look upon the ghosts of the dead Khmers and live."

"We shall be out before dark," insisted King.